Category Archives: Lisa Stansfield

Have to totally agree with my blog partner here Rique and fellow WordPress blogger The International Review Of Music that 2014 has been a tremendous all around year for funky music. And funky is Rique and my favorite kind of music from my understanding. And this year we’ve had that become popular on a massive level thanks to starting the year out grooving with Pharrell William’s “Happy”. This was a global phenomenon-with people all across the world doing their dance to the song on YouTube. For the first time in history,a number one funk song connected billions of people in the internet age. And that alone is no small feat. And one Pharrell should be proud of for his entire life.

If “Happy” was standing by itself this year? That would have been wonderful. But it did so much more. Kelis and even 90’s quiet storm soul singer Joe released tremendously funky music this year! And massively welcomed comebacks from Prince,Funkadelic,War,D’Angelo and posthumously from the late Michael Jackson were also enormously successful events. In fact D’Angelo’s Black Messiah ended off the year with a major surprise release in the wake of the tragic and highly topical police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri. That album may have had to wait until 2015 to see the light if that dark day hadn’t have shinned the light on the need to talk,sing and play about it.

Since funk was the key to providing not only great music but positive and enriching messages this year? I wanted to conduct our first interactive blog here on Andresmusictalk. There have been many wonderful releases this year in the funky spectrum of sound. Hoping all of you have been enjoying them. So presented below is a list of key funk,jazz and soul related albums from 2014. Inviting all of you to select which ones interested you most! Wishing everyone a new dance and new vitality of life for the year to come and enjoy the polling everyone! Thank you!

As a UK understudy of Barry White,Lisa Stansfield took the late 80’s/early 90’s by storm with her strong vocalizing of the sort of orchestral soul vision that White had helped pioneer. Always creatively strong and vital,Stansfield didn’t continue the same commercial success in the US that she maintained in the UK throughout the 90’s. Her comeback’s became less frequent-culminating in a decade absence after 2004. There was in fact a three-four month waiting period between the UK and US release of her new comeback album Seven. On the other hand,the US version was released just in time for summer. And concluded with a song entitled “Love Can”.

Opening with a percussive drum beat with a deep,thumping bass line playing the accenting the rhythm a jazzy electric piano solo comes in. This is followed by a burst of string and horn orchestration-with a flute and violin playing their own counter melody before Stansfield’s deep,rangy and resonate vocals some in. While the melody of the some seems a bit mysterious, even reflective at first,by the time the chorus arrives? The mood of the song turns excitedly aroused-both lyrically and musically as she sings of the need to be vulnerable in love. The mood of the instrumentation raised from somewhat quietly funky to enthusiastically dramatic as the song builds from beginning to end before ending with an unaccompanied violin crescendo.

While surely extending on Stansfield’s love of the Barry White/Marvin Gaye style funk soul groove of the mid 70’s,she extends it even further on this song by employing live instrumentation. This is especially bought out when it comes to the live drumming. This presents a very different milieu than the programmed rhythms I was more used to hearing on her late 80’s/early 90’s recordings. What is most pleasing is how much she understands the funk she has continued to grow into musically. The rhythm and bass line are presented in a spare way,but she maintains her bold orchestral settings as well. Its a wonderful example of how live instrumentation,produced with eloquence,can sound in a crisp digitally recorded setting.